DEV Community: MarcusZ

Alfred better dictionary

MarcusZ — Sun, 11 Jul 2021 14:01:39 +0000

What is Alfred?

For those who have never heard of Alfred, it is an app for macOS which boosts your efficiency with hotkeys, keywords, text expansion, and more. Alfred does come with a free tier, but you might consider upgrading to their powerpack if you find the additional features useful. In this article, I am going to share with you the default workflow Alfred has for looking up definitions of words and the little workflow I created to make the experience a little better.

Disclaimer: You need the powerpack to use some of the Alfred features I am using.

Alfred Dictionary

Before we move on to the little workflow I have created, let's take a quick look at the default one. Alfred has an amazing integration with the Macbook built-in dictionaries for which I can easily toggle Alfred and type in the keyword define (this is customizable as well) follow with the word I want to search for. Here is a screenshot on what it looks like when I try to look up the definition for the word amazing:

Now, if I click Enter, it will actually open up the dictionary app with the word amazing prefilled to the search field. This does make looking up definitions easier because I no longer have to open up my browser and google for the definitions. But, could it be better?

Alfred Better Dictionary?

By better, I mean it will be great to have a preview of the definitions instead of having to open the dictionary app to see the full definitions. Of course, I am not the only one asking this question. A quick google search gave me a list of results of people asking similar questions on Alfred forum and also Reddit thread. After doing some research, there is a workflow created by mr-pennyworth which do just that. I gave the workflow a try, and it did work, but I am not a fan of having to import the dictionaries into HTML files. So, I did not stop here, the search for a better dictionary continues. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any other alternatives that could meet my need, until I learn about Alfred QuickLook. So what QuickLook can do is, if I type in an URL in Alfred search bar, I can then use the default binding Shift/⌘ Y to toggle a preview of that URL in my default browser.

My take on a better dictionary

Now that QuickLook feature is awesome, and ideas quickly popped into my mind to use it to improve the definition look-up experience. The idea is simple, I can type in the word I want to look up for, and then hitting Shift will open the preview of the definition in any of the online dictionaries I have set. Let's take a quick look at the end result before moving on to the implementation.

en is the keyword and the word after that is whatever I want to look up for. Currently, I have two online dictionaries setup, Oxford and Cambridge

Now I can easily navigate to the dictionary I want to look up from and hit Shift to open the preview.

And that's it, I am pretty happy with this workflow. And here is what I did to get it to work. It is super simple, all I need to do is to create a blank workflow, add a Script Filter Input and the following script. This script is just an example for English-English definitions, you can also set it up for online thesaurus, English-to other language definitions, translations, etc.

require 'json'

dictionary_list = [
    {"Oxford Dictionary": "https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/{query}?q={query}"},
    {"Cambridge Dictionary": "https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/{query}"}
]

script_filter_items = []

dictionary_list.each do |hash|
    hash.each do |k, v|
        script_filter_items.push(title: k, quicklookurl: v)
    end
end

puts({ items: script_filter_items }.to_json)

Caveat

Thank you for reading this far, if you decided to give it a try please be aware that:

This flow will not work if you don't have an internet connection
You might see advertisements in the preview depending on the online dictionary you are using.

[Part I] Switching from Linux to Mac

MarcusZ — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 16:21:44 +0000

Intro

In this article, I am sharing my personal experience on switching over from Linux to Mac. I will compare both of them in terms of the 3 aspects below, and for each section, I will share what apps or software I am using for both Linux and Mac.

Window manager
Daily usage
Development machine

Some of you might ask, but why the switch? To be honest, the switch is mainly personal. I have always wanted to own a Macbook, but couldn't afford one before this. Kudos to Linux and the community, as an open-source operating system, I have benefited a lot from it for free. I have used it to learn to program and landed myself a web developer job, which I continue to use as my working machine until late 2020. Again, this switch is mainly personal, and I still love Linux very much.

Window Manager

A little background before diving in, I have been using a Linux machine since 2018 until I bought myself a MacBook Pro in November 2020. The reason why I am comparing window managers here is that I am deeply in love with working on my Linux machine using i3, a tiling window manager. I will say that this is the most important factor affecting my buying decision on a laptop. Therefore, I did quite some research on whether the Mac environment offers anything similar. After some intense study, I found yabai, a tiling window manager for macOS. I thought of trying it first on a virtual machine, but unfortunately, I couldn't get it to work. So, I made the buying decision solely based on studying through the GitHub repository, Reddit discussions, and YouTube videos.

Of course, yabai is the first thing I installed when my Macbook arrived. The installation is pretty straightforward and well documented. Differ from i3, I need to install a hotkey daemon, I am using skhd, to set all the key bindings. All these key bindings are used to interact with the tiling window manager.

To give you guys a better picture of my setup and my working flow. I am using 2 displays with 5 desktops on each of them. Very frequently I will have 2 apps opening on the same desktop which are tilled properly thanks to yabai. Another thing I want to clarify here is that I am a VIM addict so I don't really use my mouse or touchpad much (although the touchpad on Mac is really great). Therefore, I am really looking for a tiling window manager that allows me to do all of these below using only the keyboard:

Switch focus to the desired desktop on multiple displays
Switch focus to different windows (opened apps) in the same desktop
Toggle fullscreen on a tilled window
Moving window from one desktop to another

I am very happy that yabai + skhd is able to do everything above and it is so customizable that I have customized all the key bindings to match what I was using in i3. Although yabai is still missing some features that are available in i3, I find it good enough to mimic my working flow in i3. The only thing that has been annoying me is that sometimes the focus of a window is switched wrongly (at least not what I am expecting) after killing another window. I have found related issues on yabai GitHub repo, tried editing the config file using the suggestions, but it still happens sometimes. Probably I should give it another look since I have last updated my config file a few months ago. I appreciate comments if anyone reading this has a similar problem and is managed to fix it.

Overall, yabai is a really good alternative to i3. I managed to set it up to reproduce almost 90% of my working flow on a Linux machine with i3. This is getting a little too long, so I will break them down into 3 parts. I will follow up with another 2 parts talking about the experience of using both Mac and Linux for day to day usage and as a development machine some days later. Thank you for reading this far!

My Transition From Mechanical to Software Engineering

MarcusZ — Tue, 31 Dec 2019 02:55:27 +0000

Introduction

This post is dedicated to PostCo, a company that believes in me and offer me a full-time position as a software developer. In this blog post, I will briefly share my experiences on three different phases starting from the pre-interview preparation, the actual interview and finally on the working experience after I accepted the offer.

Pre-interview Preparation

Before I move on, allow me to briefly introduce myself. My name is Marcus, a fresh graduate mechanical engineering student from the University of Malaya. My career interest has shifted towards software engineering since my third year of mechanical study. From then on, I started teaching myself how to code through many of the online resources. Other than taking online courses, I had also gone through a 3 months internship as a software developer intern at a local startup. After the internship, I am convinced that software engineering is what I want to do as a career. Immediately after my graduation, I started firing out my resume applying for junior developer positions at many different companies while studying the book - Cracking the Coding Interview.

Actual Interview

I do not have high hope of receiving any replies from any of the companies simply for the reason that I am not a computer science student. However, the result turned out to be pretty good. Six out of the many companies I had applied to, offered me the opportunities to interview and I attended 4 of them. PostCo is the third interview that I went to and I am very happy to share my interview experience with PostCo here.

The interview was divided into 2 rounds, the first round was the CEO round and followed by the technical interview. During the CEO round, I was asked questions like how would I use technology to help solve PostCo's business problems. I did okay for the first round, not very good but not that bad.

After the CEO round, two developers from PostCo walked into the meeting room preparing for the technical interview. I was excited and nervous at the same time because that was my first interview with developers. In my previous two interviews, those sessions were conducted by HR with some paper and online coding tests. Just as they were walking in the room, in my mind, I started imagining that they would ask me to code on the whiteboard solving some difficult algorithms and data structures problems. Turned out I was wrong again, they were more interested in the reasons why I decided to switch from mechanical to software engineering. Our conversation went pretty well, I managed to explain myself and at the same time learn more about the tech stack PostCo is using and also the day to day job as a software developer there. After that, I had a pair programming session with one of the developers solving the common coding interview question - converting snake_case to camelCase. And that's all for the technical interview. At the end of the session, I was told that the result will be out in two weeks' time.

Accepting the offer

While waiting for the reply from PostCo, I did not think that I hold a chance to receive an offer from them for two main reasons. The first reason is that PostCo is a startup, and usually, a startup will want to hire someone who can hit the ground running. The second reason is that the main tech stack at PostCo is Ruby on Rails which is something that I have never done before. I was expecting a No from them and started looking out for other opportunities.

However, I was very glad that my expectation was wrong again this time. I received a call from one of the developers just one week after my interview and he told me that PostCo is offering me a two months software associate program with the opportunity to turn full-time depending on my performance. With PostCo's offer, I have a total of 3 Yes out of the 4 interviews that I had attended. After careful consideration, I have decided to go with PostCo because I like the mission, colleagues, and environment at PostCo.

This month is my fourth month working as a software developer at PostCo, which means that I passed my "probation" and I am now a full-timer. To keep this short and sweet, I will not go into details on my day to day job but just listing down what new tech stacks I have learned so far and also what I like the most working at PostCo.

New Tech Stack:
- Ruby on Rails
- React
What I like the most working at PostCo:
- My opinions are heard even though I am a fresh graduate.
- I was given the trust to develop new features for the product.
- Help and guides are always there whenever I needed them.
- Colleagues who are eager to learn.

Last But Not Least

It was a very hard decision for me when I decided to switch from mechanical to software engineering. Until now, I am not sure if it was a good decision but I have no regret at all. I followed my heart, and now I am enjoying my job working as a software developer. To be honest, it was not an easy journey, I have so many new things to learn every day at work and sometimes I felt like I know nothing. I think they call it imposter syndrome. But, there is no free lunch in this world, you have to work hard for what you want to achieve. I know that my journey ahead will be filled by a lot of new challenges and new things to learn but yeah, let's bring it on! If I were to give one piece of advice to anyone out there thinking of switching into software development, I will say:

Never stop learning and have more confidence in yourself. No one knows you better than yourself.

Thanks PostCo again for this amazing opportunity!